


Queen of queens ( and mother of mothers )

by menthuthuyoupi



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, Raffle prize for Mina!, Uhh a little mito/oito at the end there :) for mina, i love celestial imagery a lot please no cap, oito centric fic here we go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21597040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menthuthuyoupi/pseuds/menthuthuyoupi
Summary: Queen Oito Hui Gou Rou has lived a troubled life.But there's a time for defeat;as there is a time for triumph, isn't there?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	Queen of queens ( and mother of mothers )

Before Oito was queen, she'd known of powerlessness.

When she was young, she sought no greater truth.

And when she was younger still, the world did not take. But it left her longing and longing for more than what she had. Hers was a world made of hopes then. And back then she pictured God not as a child, but as the keen, cutting outline of every buffed diamond behind a case of glass.

Where she'd come from, happiness was a myth. 

She'd been from a space below, a space predestined for gloom. From streets dwarfed with leering shade and the sickle-like curve of greedy, opportunistic smiles plastered onto dirtied faces. Planning course for better lives.

But the world turned over to her a man from on high, with an offer she couldn't refuse.

One that bore promise of glittering, pearlescent opals and the beady eye of black pearls.

She'd given ear to the siren-song of a glorified and lavish lifestyle. One grand and larger than her tiny world.

She revelled in that back then-- queen of an Empire.

Queen of them all.

☆

Oito decided in her youth, love was a burdensome thing.

Hui Guo Rou had not loved her.

And she had not loved Hui Guo Rou either, that much she was sure of. As sure as she was vain.

But she did love skeins of golden jewelry and the precious dewdrop shape of cascading opal.

She loved how they sat against the tender trace of her collarbone. She loved the cool weight of them.

Fools, she thought, she'd known all too well.

She never thought herself one of them.

☆

A commoner she used to be.

But that's beneath her now.

☆

But then she had her own little star.

And then she was beneath that too.

Oito spent her waking moments with big eyes. Tired face.

And then she learned she was caught in a war between constellations. A war where planets would align to plunge frantic into the chests of siblings, and rip out their hearts to spread their dust among the stars.

When she was queen, she knew of powerlessness.

To be queen meant to be a mother.

Mother to a nation.

Mother to a child.

She became motherhood.

And through motherhood, Oito became acquainted with the frailties and fragility of new life. How youth, fed and delicate like the shimmer of paper glass wings, could sleep at her back, swaddled and secure. The sush of Woble's tiny ribcage a constant against hers.

Life was powerful. Life was vast and endless.

It could also be soft and finite.

☆

He'd offered her everything. And in some ways, he robbed her before she even knew it.

That was okay though. That was her fault, and hers alone; she'd convince herself on silent nights staring into the cradle. Staring down at round cheeks and lips frothy with bubble.

The cage had looked too promising.

☆

He's young. That much Oito can tell for sure.

He's young but he carries with him the souls of the dead, and the spirits have not been laid to rest.

She stares at him sometimes ( when she thinks he isn't looking ), and wonders. About his eyes. The pitch black in the pit of them. How they could look like that.

Look like they've seen too much. 

But she had let him hold her, for the first time-- her little star.

And something inside him softened. Thawed the winter ice. Smoothed away the shattered-glass surface of dawn.

After all, once you have a light, you cannot help but to share it.

☆

Amidst the heat of warfare, planets collapsed around her. In their death dance, in their frenzy, stardust winked themselves from existence.

Supernovas sprang alive.

A part of the heavens were cast downward. Comets met their dying. They molted life as snakes shed skin, and their tails skimmed afterimages against a skyline red.

But after that, there was no dawn.

Sorrow found Oito. 

_ 'In the sky,' _ they told her,  _ 'there are better stories.' _

But in these stories, she saw no soft endings.

☆

"Tell me something."

She asked him that noon she left the ship.

"You'll be okay, won't you?"

She couldn't leave him here. Something haunted him, and he clambered for it, chasing and  _ chasing _ demons of no soul to pity with quicksilver and chains of mercury.

"I'll be fine," He assured. "I have to be, don't I?" Because somewhere down the line perhaps, a part of him had realized what he'd been missing. What he needed. "I have someone waiting for me here. And two more back home."

Oito pondered then. Where had home been, for him?

He had spoken to her so reverently of tales. Tales tied to names that wept in daylight sunflower.

She knew then. 

Home, for him, took on the shape of what looked a lot like people.

Perhaps she didn't need to wonder all that much.

She paused.

"Will you promise me something?"

"Yes?" Kurapika inclined his head towards her.

"That you'll live."

"And --" She pressed a palm lightly to his shoulder, as if to steady away any hasty assumptions. "I don't mean it like that. Not like just surviving," She paused again, this time to lick her lips. "I mean like… Truly, really living."

A second. A shared moment between them.

He tried to smile.

"Of course."

After a while, the smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

"I'll try."

☆

After months, she learned how to be grounded again.

Oito found land.

And land knew her.

She breathed sea spray on the back of her tongue.

The water warbled around her feet, graced with sun glint sparkle, and the ivory underwing of a dancing sea slithered at her ankles, hissing at bare skin.

Woble tittered at her chest.

Oito decided in her youth, love was a burdensome thing.

She'd been wife to a husband who looked at others as if they were dirt to be ground under heel.

And when she was still young, she learned to be the silent lips to a loveless marriage.

But she loved her daughter. More than anything. More than silver and gold, it turned out. More than regalia and crown.

It was good enough for her.

(  _ When she was a mother, she knew no weakness _ . )

(  _ She'd been strong on her own _ . )

☆

There was a woman.

She had a star of her own, too.

A star that burned so bright the moon shed its cheeks afresh with the midnight glimmer of tears, and looked until it could no longer.

She's welcomed with grins filled with sugar, and smiles so honeyed they could be syrup sweet, compliment only to freckled cheeks. Cheeks round from motherhood too early. Too round from smiling. Round from loving too much.

And the sight made her stomach flutter, because she knew in her heart that it was beautiful. 

Oito hadn't loved many; that she had been sure of.

But love came back to her in the form of a woman. And she knew it when weeks later, Mito pressed pink lips to her hand. Warm and soft, like sinking into a dream.

There, on that little island where the sun struggled into a dim and cloud spun sky, Oito realized something. It was a gradual kind of realizing, like riptide patience on its pull, from echo to shimmer.

And it said unto her:

_ ( You belong to a future where you can be be loved. ) _

And she was no longer a queen. She was no longer Queen Oito Hui Gou Rou, eighth queen of Kakin. Eighth queen of many.

Now she was just,

Oito.

A monarch no longer. A monarch without a land, without subjects.

Just a mother.

And she had a place here.

The world could keep it's spin ( and the sky it's planets ). But the future belonged to her now.

And she decided, her's would be a soft future, with an even softer ending.


End file.
